Serious job cuts hit Silicon Knights

Too Human developer Silicon Knights has confirmed some serious layoffs hit the company this week - but the numbers aren't quite as bad as first hinted.

The Canadian developer has sacked 45 employees, leaving "just under 40" to work on future projects. Early rumours suggested as many as 72 staffers had been asked to leave, with names being removed from X-Men Destiny credits.

We just finished a project with [Activision Blizzard] that got completed. We had another project lined up that had been in the works for months, which had been green-lit and at the final second, at the high corporate level, the project got canceled. We don’t know why. Probably something to do with the publisher on their side, but that resulted in us having too many people so we had to do a layoff.

The company hopes to rehire former employees after a handful of new projects and contracts are finalised, as those remaining at Silicon Knights consider this an opportunity to refocus and "return to its roots", as work continues on an much-requested title.

This isn't the first round of major job cuts to hit Silicon Knights either - in 2008, soon after the release of Too Human, 26 employees were laid off. It's not known how many of those have made their way back to work on the rumoured sequel.

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[…] so far – and this may well be the ebbs and flows of video game development (the same thing happened last November), but the timing is unfortunate for Silicon Knights, and won't fill Eternal Darkness fans with […]